"Oh, I wish you wouldn't, Norn," protested Patricia, in a small voice. "I do so want to have her for a friend. She's so lovely and talented and attractive. What is the matter with her now that you say such things? You didn't use to feel like that."
Elinor hesitated. "I don't know," she replied slowly, measuring her words. "I can't put my finger on it, but she doesn't seem the same to me as she did at first. She isn't jealous of my poor work, of course, but I can feel a something—a wall or barrier—that she raises up between us whenever my work is spoken of. I felt it when we talked about the subject of the prize designs, and I felt it today more clearly than ever. We can't be friends any more as we were, I'm afraid. Something has come between us. 'The little rift within the lute,'" she quoted sorrowfully.
"'That by and by will make the music mute,'" ended Patricia dismally. "Oh, I hope not, Norn. I hope it'll all turn out well and we can go on pleasantly and peaceably for the rest of the term. I hate rows and suspicions. I'd like to live 'in charity and love to all men,' but I'm always getting into scrapes. I no sooner learn to like a person than they turn out to be fakes."
"I haven't gone that far," Elinor gently reminded her. "I didn't mean to say that Doris Leighton was a fake. I only meant that my feelings toward her had changed. You don't have to give up your admiration for her, Pat dear."
Patricia shook her head slowly from side to side. "'Whither thou goest I will go,'" she quoted. "I won't have her for a friend if she gives you the creeps, Norn, and you know it. I've been mistaken in people before, but you've always been the same old true blue. You and Miss Jinny know better than I do, and I give in. I won't be an enemy—you wouldn't want that—but I won't be a real friend like I have been, doing errands and helping her stretch canvases and all that. You and I will stand together always, old lady, and if the Roberts prize has done nothing but show us how very nice we each think the other is, it will have had its uses as far as we are concerned."
They sat in comfortable silence till they heard the front door slam and Judith's feet on the stair.
"I wonder what that young monkey is up to?" laughed Patricia as they heard Judith moving about in her room, preparing for dinner with the alacrity of hungry virtue. "She won't let on for the world, but I know she's feeling mighty important about something. I can tell by the way she whisks about that she's enjoying herself immensely."